The present disclosure generally relates to fiber optic cables and more specifically to installation tools for cleaving, splicing, or otherwise treating optical fibers during an installation.
This disclosure is made primarily within the context of an optical fiber cleaving tool that cuts or cleaves an optical fiber cleanly for installation of a connector or the like. It will be understood, however, that the invention is not limited to a cleaving tool, but may be applicable to other types of optical fiber installation tools such as for instance, fiber splicing tools.
In order to cut or cleave an optical fiber properly for installing connectors and the like, the optical fiber must be precisely positioned relative to a set of critical components within a fiber cleaving tool. The critical components may include, for example, fiber alignment elements, fiber gripping or clamping surfaces, a scoring blade, and a cleaving anvil. Many fiber cleaving tools include a fiber handler upstream of these critical components that accepts and holds the jacket from which a stripped optical fiber extends and aligns the optical fiber to the critical components within the cleaving tool. Fiber handlers known in the art are designed to accept and align a single fiber cable construction, which may include, for example, a 250 μm coated fiber, a furcated fiber, a tight buffered fiber, and a multitude of jacketed cable types and sizes. As a result of these different fiber/cable constructions, each of which requires a different fiber handler, a fiber cleaving toolkit can potentially require four or more separate fiber handlers to cleave multiple fiber constructions. Having multiple fiber handlers can add to product cost, increase confusion and potential error by the user of a cleaving tool, and increase the complexity of a toolkit.